Emergency crews bring man down from Cinquantenaire arch

Brussels emergency services carried out a rescue operation on Tuesday night to get a man down from the triumphal arch at Cinquantenaire. The man was perched on the arch’s ledge, some 30 metres in the air.

The man apparently climbed up the monument on his own sometime in the evening. The rescue crew got him down close to 2 am.

“He is someone with a history of psychological problems and is currently dealing with a depression,” Ilse Van de Keere of the Brussels-Ixelles police zone told Bruzz. “He has been taken to hospital.”

No one is quite sure why the man decided to climb the famous Arcade du Cinquantenaire, and he refused to talk to police. Eventually, firefighters trained in climbing brought the man down safely.

Photos: Guillaume Alvarez/Bruzz